>Electric motor controls have been around a very long time.
Not in a format that is useful for EVs, there hasn't. Only recent developments in semiconductors have made it viable to design a motor controller that is very efficient across a broad range of torques and speeds, and is also lightweight and cheap enough for use in a small passengar vehicle.
>example hybrid electric trains, elevators, water pumps.
Those examples of controllers have almost nothing in common with modern EV controllers.
> Not sure what metrics you are looking at but EVs cost less per mile to operate, accelerate faster, are quieter, and have lower maintenance.
Let's have a look at those.
I am not convinced that the "cost per mile to operate" has been fully worked out over the full lifetime and ownership of an EV - we have yet to see how the overall economics of EV ownership will work out as they filter down the 2nd hand market chain.
We will also see how the cost of maintentance works out - EVs are not currently known for being reliable.
https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/ev-reliability-varied-as-...
Accelerating quicker - well, that's fine, if you want to burn through battery, and mess around at the lights. It's also not too hard to find or modify a car to make it have more acceleration.
That just leaves quieter - which is an undeniable benefit, if only it were safe for multi-ton hunks of mobile metal to be silent. As it is, all the EVs I've seen have speaker-generated tones at low speeds.